COURSE DESCRIPTION
Geography 135: Climate
Summit
This
climate summit course is designed to be a total "immersion"
into the process (presentations, discussions and negotiations)
and atmosphere of an environment summit such as those of the
Conference of the Parties (COPs) that are the basis for Climate
Convention Framework negotiations.
The summit is the culmination of the class while the core of
the class is the preparation for this summit.
Preparation takes place during class through a number of different
activities including lectures, group discussions, web research
and group presentations, as well as outside of the class-room
where students need to plan meetings with members of their group
to coordinate presentation and writing activities.
Each student plays a specific and unique role in the summit.
Each student is either a representative of a country (or group
of countries), or of a Non-Governmental organization (NGO),
or of the media. In his/her role, each student is expected to
be as authentic as possible. For instance, government representatives
are expected to be partisan in favor of their particular country,
while NGO representatives are expected to represent world-wide
interests. Media representatives are expected to fairly and
factually report events and provide analyses prior to and after
the summit. Each role has particular responsibilities and obligations
that are described on this website.
COURSE PHILOSOPHY
This class has been designed to promote students learning and
deep understanding in several knowledge and skill areas related
to climate change and its practice by professionals. It is learner-centered,
that is its goal is to achieve a certain level of knowledge by
students and not only expose students to a certain amount of material.
In this learner-centered paradigm students are actively involved
in the construction of their knowledge and understanding through
gathering and synthesizing and integrating information with general
skills of inquiry, communication, critical thinking and problem
solving. The instructors' role is to guide and coach students
to achieve the course learning objectives that are clearly communicated
to them. In this paradigm, learning and assessing are intertwined
and intructor and students evaluate together. Prompt feedback
is provided to the studnets to help them reflect on and improve
their learning. The culture of the class is cooperative and collaborative
(effective
teamwork behavior).
This course calls
for each student to endorse this new learning paradigm and be
activie participants, working individually and collectively on
the asigned tasks in-class and outside the class, reflecting on
the feedback given to them, providing feedback to the instructors
and becoming life-long learners.
COURSE OBJECTIVES
Following the
precepts of the learner-centered paradigm, learning outcomes have
been established for the class (class
learning outcomes). They describe what the faculty in tcharge
of the class intends students to know, understand and be able
to accomplish with their knowledge in this course.
COURSE EVALUATION
A variety of student's
assessment measures (writings, presentations, team work, class
discussion, final summit participation) are used to arrive at
the final grade. Multiple assessment measures allow students to
express themselves fully and bring different talents and learning
styles to the class, and honor them. The class product is an agreement
composed of several articles crafted by the students throughout
the class. This is a unique product for which there is no correct
answer and that depends on the students' creativity. The fairness
and reliability of the evaluation -that is by nature subjetive
- is ensured by making public the criteria by which the students
will be judged.
The principal
assessment instrument used in this class to judge students performance
in writings, presentations, teamwork and participation to the
final summit is the rubric. A rubric is a table that describes
the various criteria by which a particular task is judged. The
table contains comments that describe the characteristics of work
for each of the mastery level.
All evaluations
are made jointly by the instructors (Professor and TA) on the
basis of both qualitative and quantitative contribution.
Attendance
is required at each class meeting.
Professor Catherine Gautier, D.Sc.
6804 Ellison Hall
office hours by appointment
email: gautier@icess.ucsb.edu
telephone: (805) 893-8095
Teaching Assistant
Erin Middletown
5831 Ellison Hall
office hours: Tuesday 9 -11 am
email: erin@geog.ucsb.edu
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